Encounter with the Ex -- an old flame on Twitter

Or Facebook, Ello, MySpace, Diaspora, Xing, LinkedIn, Weibo, a random web site.

We were tempted to make this a Halloween Special, but it could be misunderstood, although the chances that the old flame visits this specific blog, gets to this specific posting and recognizes herself here are miniscule.

It makes little difference whether you google someone or whether that person magically appears in a reference or a follow list. It does make a huge difference if he or she features prominently in an article, another unlikely occurrence, unless something very bad or very good happens.

Do we need a strategy for that day?

Of course. Modern humans are supposed to have a strategy for ever conceivable event in their lives. This poses a problem to simple minded critters like yours truly. Not conceiving of future events is a viable solution, but terminally boring.

A decade or so of strategic thinking got me a strategy that works, and once I had it, I began to see patterns in the lives of others, from the question what to have for breakfast to major international speeches.

The grand unified strategy for everything is the pretend strategy. You pretend to have a strategy, and the strategy itself consists of pretending. The blogster's mood soured a little upon realizing that it had been done before. Douglas Adams' answer to everything suspiciously looks like a numeric version of it. The answer is 42.

The bible does the same. The answer is God.
Although the guys who wrote it wobbled throughout their narrative. They tried the concept of the trinity, but then settled ultimately for the unified God.

Knowing itself* in the good company of Douglas Adams and the Bible, the blogster felt confident to be able to handle that inevitable social media phenomenon of The Encounter with the Ex.

A photo of the old flame appeared on the screen.

Before the new computer had even finished rendering the image - like, in no time at all - the pretend strategy showed its worth.

Zero, zilch.

Swept away by memories of days and nights, by scents, by laughter, by hurt, by the tickling of the cold morning breeze on the jog out in Napa Valley, by the surprisingly insecure first kiss at a red traffic light [a good way to pass the wait time].

The smell of sulfur.

No, this was not an omen of what was to come, it was the smell of burnt matches in the bathroom. Not from hiding to smoke in the bathroom either. Masking a human smell with the awfully pungent smell of sulfur in a tiny space -- in a way, it was a statement beyond that stated purpose.

Caught up, lost. Smart, unforgiving.

A wish you well thought, then a single click, and she is gone. 

Maybe pretending works for some people, it has never worked for the blogster since the loss of the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and Jesus (in that order).

So, when you come across and old flame, be cool, be grateful, and go your own way.

* Here is the blogster trying again to emulate the gender neutral style of TheEditor.